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"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please." (Mark Twain)

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Would You Like An Order of Crow With Your Burger?

Walter Jones, Republican congressman from North Carolina, is no longer a fan of Dick & Dubya's Excellent Invasion:

Although he voted for the war, he has since become one of its most vociferous opponents on Capitol Hill, where the hallway outside his office is lined with photographs of the "faces of the fallen".

"If we were given misinformation intentionally by people in this administration, to commit the authority to send boys, and in some instances girls, to go into Iraq, that is wrong," he told the newspaper. "Congress must be told the truth."

And, with all due respect to Rep. Jones, why should we care what he thinks? Well, because his previous position on the war was somewhat different:

It was a culinary rebuke that echoed around the world, heightening the sense of tension between Washington and Paris in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. But now the US politician who led the campaign to change the name of french fries to "freedom fries" has turned against the war....

Mr Jones, who in March 2003 circulated a letter demanding that the three cafeterias in the House of Representatives' office buildings ban the word french from menus, said it was meant as a "light-hearted gesture".

But the name change, still in force, made headlines around the world, both for what it said about US-French relations and its pettiness.

Now Mr Jones appears to agree. Asked by a reporter for the North Carolina News and Observer about the name-change campaign - an idea Mr Jones said at the time came to him by a combination of God's hand and a constituent's request - he replied: "I wish it had never happened."

I ask you - how are we going to win hearts and minds in Baghdad, when we're losing them in North Carolina?